Evaluation of Drought Tolerance in Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) Under Water Deficit Stress Conditions

Drought is a threaded factor in the world production and application of breeding methods could improve the tolerant and adapted cultivators under drought stress condition. In order to evaluate and determine the stress tolerance indices and identifion of tolerant genotypes to drought stress, 15 safflower genotypes were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with three replications in two conditions (stress and non-stress). Analysis of variance showed significant differences among genotypes for all traits, stress tolerance indices and yield in both conditions. Significant positive correlation was found between grain yield in the stress condition with indicators stress tolerance index, harmonic mean and geometric mean productivity indicating that these indices are suitable criteria for screening drought tolerant genotypes. No significant correlation was observed between Ys with tolerance index and mean productivity, hence they can be discarded as the desirable markers for identifying drought tolerant genotypes. In conclusion, using a graphical approach of three dimensional scatter plots, Principal component analysis and biplot analysis, two tolerant genotype (Syrian and Kino-76) were selected for future programs in stress and non-stress condition.